[Prev|Next|Home] 24 Hours of Democracy [24 Hours Home] --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Michael Boyle On February 9, 1996, the President of the United States, William J. Clinton, signed a document called The Telecommunication Reform Act of 1996. It was hailed almost universally as a landmark in American history: a bill that included sweeping measures to update, modernize and streamline communications legislation that had remained unchanged for far too long, paving the way for America's entry to the 21st Century. Or so it was advertised. In fact, the Telecommunications Reform Act contains passages that many people think, at best, are ill-advised. A moderate position is that large sections of the Act are unconstitutional. At worst, these passages spell the death-knell of the internet, and in fact of all interactive, decentralized communiction in the United States and perhaps around the world. I refer, of course, to the Communications Decency Act, which was resuscitated and included in this legislation. The CDA is an insidious group of laws that intend to regulate cyberspace; to make cyberspace safe for, well, safe for people without a brain, it seems. For the laws against "indecency" and against making mention of excretory or sexual organs are such that practically everyone who uses the internet, whether for fun, for profit or for research has reason to fear prosecution under the CDA. Lori K. Fena, the Executive Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation puts the issue well: We believe, as do many members of Congress, that this law is patently unconstitutional. The new statute violates the First Amendment by being both overbroad and vague. With efforts like the 24 Hours of Democracy, the [Canadian Blue Ribbon] blackout of the WWW and the Blue Ribbon campaign I hope that perhaps her assessment will be the one ultimately obtains in the real world of legislation and judicial decision. However, on this occasion I think we should also look forward: we should deal with the present with an eye on the future and memories of the past. Huh? Well, I think that there are two important ways that governments can herd these cats we like to call, collectively, the internet. One is by legislation, and we see the success they are having with that - hopefully not much. There is another way, though, and it is in many ways a method that has already begun and stands a greater chance of success. This second way is for governments - whether American or otherwise - to use their regulatory role in such a way that the hardware that is put in place to take us closer towards the mythical "Information Superhighway" (and the standards upon which the hardware is based) no longer allows for fully symmetrical systems. Although symmetry will always be more theoretical than practical - after all, bigger pipes and more expensive and powerful computers make some on the internet more equal than others - the internet is currently a symmetrical system, and my measly PowerBook is just as much a part of the 'net as some big Unix box in a lab someplace. If the goal of regulators is to limit the growth of uncontrolled, un-vetted communication among their citizens, a far easier way to do that is to encourage the development of systems that are not peer-to-peer, that allow the big players to gain much greater access in than I have out. The insidiousness of this sort of tactic becomes clear when we take a quick look at who else would benefit from such a system. That quick look indicates that it is broadcasters, who base their revenues on advertising: upon guaranteeing that a certain number of eyeballs will see certain images at certain times during the day. Although broadcasters are making a lot of noise about the 'net, it is doubtful that anyone is making anywhere near as much money using the current iteration of the "InfoHighway" as is made through plain old broadcasting. For this reason, I see a significant confluence of values between regulators and the people with the most at stake financially, the broadcasters. Why should a government bother to worry too much about regulation when they can easily enlist a few large corporations to do it for them? Although deregulation is seen as a generally positive aspect of the legislation about which we are protesting, if these players with deep pockets decide to move decisively they could effectively implement a system with interactivity, sure, but a poor, narrow interactivity that relies on pre-made programming, large pipes to the home and narrow trickles of data back upstream. Imagine a set-top box with a small controller feeding it instructions by infrared (like a good remote control). Coming into the box you have coaxial cable to feed high bandwidth images, sounds and the like. Inside the box is a cheap 14.4 modem, which sends commands from the remote back upstream, and there you go, an "interactive" system that could grow to be rather complex. The Information Superhighway - but the Information Superhighway of our nightmares. People would eat it up - it's easy to use, you don't need to sit at your (still relatively expensive) computer to use it, and it resembles (very closely) what already exists. In fact, the tech is already here (viz. Wired Magazine, 4.01, p. 140ff.), and the deregulation that is included in the Telecom Reform Act of 1996 paves the way for such systems, while still allowing it to live up to the expectations of Vice President Gore and the rest. The trouble with this is obvious, but the solutions are not. If such a system were to obtain, the internet could chug along as always, no problem. The big money would tend to go to the system from which the greatest revenues could be extracted - the nightmare system. The internet could very easily become a quaint backwater as newcomers flock to the easier, more recognizable systems, at which point regulation of content becomes a moot point. Regulation of a hybrid cable/modem system? Simple. The start-up cost of becoming a content provider would be a significant enough barrier of entry for most, if not all, users of the internet. And the re-emphasis on "programming" content would be so lucrative that content providers would gladly regulate themselves (does the PMRC ring any bells?) in order to retain their golden goose along any terms governments desire, whether to counter porno or to ensure local content, it makes no difference. So, economics doesn't present a ready solution here - it is an ethical and political choice that we must make as societies. It will be a difficult row to hoe, however, so we must, as Dave Winer likes to say, keep digging. We must continue as users, as content providers (as we all are on the internet) and as technically-able people, to dig in, to entrench ourselves as the only viable or acceptible model of the Information Superhighway. Let us continue to protest, to turn our Web pages black as [Free Speech] we mourn the "death of free (electronic) expression", to celebrate a grass-roots 24 Hours of Democracy and to natter back and forth in countless ways over the internet. Let us also remain, in the words of the philosopher, ever vigilant, for our focus upon the attack on the front door may prove to distract us from the much larger and better organized force at the back door. They are approaching fast. -Michael Boyle ( mboyle@alcor.concordia.ca) --------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Next] [Home] --------------------------------------------------------------------------- [This is a Blue Ribbon] [Utne Lens] This page was last updated on Thu, Feb 22, 1996 at 2:03:25. Thanks to the Utne Lens for donating server space for the 24 Hours of Democracy. Email Cafe Utne's Coordinator for the 24 Hours Project.